


Standing Orders

by Folfar



Series: Three-line Whip [2]
Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Hospitals, M/M, Pre-Brexit, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:07:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23362930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Folfar/pseuds/Folfar
Summary: It's not like Damen set out to kill someone that morning. So it's quite a surprise when he does.
Relationships: Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince)
Series: Three-line Whip [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1680340
Comments: 10
Kudos: 78





	Standing Orders

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Italiano available: [Disposizioni Permanenti](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27762316) by [Phadeharolopade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phadeharolopade/pseuds/Phadeharolopade)



“EASY!” Makedon bellows from behind the car. Damen winces and slams on the brakes. 

“You're a shit driver, D,” Lazar announces, sticking his head in through the open passenger window.

“No, he is  _ not,”  _ Pallas strains, resolutely loyal, from behind him, red-faced and apparently burdened with ninety percent of their tools. Lazar, by contrast, is dangling a single clamp from his finger and looking incredibly smug, which means he's been putting the wind up Pallas all morning, probably. 

“Jesus,” says Damen, alarmed at the quiver in Pallas' arms. “Want to help him out there Laz?”

Lazar hoots with glee. “Listen, Pallas, the concern in his voice! Finally, your feelings reciprocated!” Pallas makes a noise of abject humiliation, even as Makedon stomps over to relieve him of his boxes. Damen, who normally knows better, makes eye contact with him. Pallas flushes a deeper red, blurts out "I have to go to the bathroom," and sprints off. Up the road. Away from the office. 

This is the last thing Damen needs today.

Get an apprentice, the Council said. It’s the civic-minded thing to do, they said. And you can pay them less, they said, but quieter. And when Damen and Nik had talked about it, they reasoned that yeah, it would be good, because the main problem with hiring new tree surgeons in central London was that a) there weren’t any, half of them having fucked off to the Forestry Commission and that sweet sweet pension scheme and b) the ones that were there would rather work cash in hand and skip tax, which wasn’t civic-minded  _ at all _ and c) after you’d covered the absentees, the tax-dodgers and the ones that worked for companies  _ other _ than AKELIOS TREES, all you were left with was the sloppy and the shit. Much better, Nik had said, to mould the ideal worker from a youth. It sounded less creepy when Nik said it. Not that much less, though. 

No-one from the council had provided a helpful leaflet about what to do if your otherwise competent and eager apprentice was also completely infatuated with you.

So Damen has an apprentice whom, it is becoming drastically clear, he cannot even talk to, and a van (which Damen can actually drive just fine) that has now been missing for a month, thanks to Kastor (who else) ‘borrowing it’ and never returning it or replying to any attempts to contact him, and on top of that, Kashel ended their whole FWB thing yesterday, because, good for her, she’s moving to Manchester to play for Man City Ladies. He is not having a good time.

He sums up his feelings the only way he knows how.

“For fucks sake,” says Damen. 

Lazar, still leaning on the window frame, laughs mockingly. “He needs to get over it,” he says. “Either that or you fuck him.” Damen pinches the bridge of his nose. “I am not,” he grinds out, “planning on fucking any of my employees.”

Makedon, finishes stowing the boxes in the car boot, and slams it shut. “You done tormenting the apprentice?” he bellows at Lazar, who inclines his head as if to say  _ maybe. _ “And you,” he says, rounding on Damen, “what the fuck was that? You have a fucking driving license, don’t you? Because I almost lost my fucking feet back there.” 

“Yes,” says Damen grimly. “I have a driving license. I am a competent driver”.

Lazar whistles through his teeth. “I am this close,” says Damen, “to making you work nights until you quit.”

“We don’t work nights,” says Lazar idly. “Not yet,” says Damen. 

Makedon’s phone rings. “Nikandros,” he says in greeting. “Yeah, he almost killed me but he’s here. Yep. I’ll pass you over.”

Damen takes the phone with an internal sigh of relief. Nikandros is a balm, Nikandros is always calm and reasonable. 

“Nik,” he complains. “I didn’t kill  _ or almost kill _ anyone.” Makedon pulls a face.

_ Damen _ he shrieks down the line  _ where are you.  _

“Not you too,” says Damen mournfully. 

_ You need to be here now _ , Nik crackles.  _ We said half past _ . 

Damen glances at the clock. It is… twenty-five past. “We did not,” he says hotly. “They said on the hour!” 

Nik makes a noise of inhuman rage.  _ I made you a fucking work calendar for a fucking reason - look, nevermind, just get here ASAP. It’s just a fucking larch. The car’s loaded, right? _

“Yes,” he says begrudgingly. “But I hate driving the Skoda.” Mostly because it looks like shit, he doesn’t say. Probably also because it’s half the size of the van and three times as unreliable, is implied. 

_ Well then, bloody drive!  _ Nik hangs up. 

“Rude,” replies Damen, to empty air. 

Makedon retrieves his phone with alacrity. “Go on then,” he says, “bugger off before his head explodes. See you tomorrow. We’re off to the council job in - uh.”

“Streatham,” says Lazar smugly. “And I will be driving the pick up.”

Damen is not allowed to drive the pick up. It is a sore point.

“You, Lazar, are a real bastard. Mak, will you wait for Pallas to get back before you go?” he says, shifting his foot on the clutch. “He just needs to calm down.”

Makedon nods and slaps the roof of the car. “Later boss.” Lazar snaps a two finger salute that makes Damen snort. Maybe it won’t be the worst day ever.

-

“Nik,” Damen says, “I killed someone. Or I almost killed someone.”

_ What _ says Nikandros. 

Damen doesn’t babble but it’s close. “He just fucking stepped out between two parked cars and he was looking at his phone and I fucking braked but I still -” he sees the man, his agggrieved blue eyes wide in a freezeframe that Damen will probably never forget, as the bumper of the car shoves into him, before he’d been tossed, up, up into the windshield. 

“He died,” Damen says helplessly, recalling again the stuttering, slowing pulse under his fingertips. “But I did chest compressions until the ambulance got there. So now he’s alive again.” Nothing makes sense. 

Nik swears.  _ Damen, where are you?  _ “The hospital,” he answers dumbly.  _ Are you hurt _ , a note of alarm in his tone. 

“No,” he says. He’d told the ambulance crew he’d follow. He did follow. He drove there after them in the car with it’s cracked windscreen and dented front hood, and it’s a wonder he wasn’t stopped. 

“I can’t leave,” he says. “There’s no-one else here for him. I need to be here.”

Nik makes soothing noises down the phone. He tells Nik where he is. He tells Nik where the car is. He tells Nik what the doctor said ( _ It’s just a matter of waiting for him to wake up; cardiac arrest and tissue damage; we’re hopeful; are you a family member? _ ) He puts his phone away, and sits outside the room they’ve put the man in, and waits for judgement.

Judgement comes about an hour later, in the form of a neat brunette man with a trimmed beard, an open face, and a harried air. He bursts through the ward doors, and pauses to talk to the nurse on reception, before striding over to where Damen is sitting blankly, staring into space.

Quite unexpectedly, the man shakes his hand. “Thankyou,” he says. “I hear you’re the one that called 999. It’s so good of you to stay. Really. We can’t thank you enough, truly,” he says, in a distracted rush, craning his head to look in through the doorway at the sleeping man, trussed up in wires and masks and the ever beeping heart monitor. 

“I’m sorry,” the bearded man says, “I’m being rude. I’m Jord - I’m a friend of his. Of Auguste’s.”

“His name’s Auguste?” says Damen, finally latching on to something. 

Nodding, Jord replies. “Yes, yes - god, I really am the first one here, aren’t I? Oh, they haven’t even updated his chart yet. Sorry, again, so rude - what’s your name?” 

Damen’s looking at the blonde man. Looking at Auguste. That’s a heavy name to carry around his neck if he ends up dying, he thinks miserably. 

Jord clears his throat.

“Sorry!” Damen jolts. “Damianos Akelios. But, uh. Damen. I go by Damen. Yes, sorry. I just - I wanted to make sure he’s alright. I did chest compressions,” he offers up pathetically. Jord lays a sympathetic hand on his arm. 

“The paramedics said he might not have survived otherwise,” he says, “you did more than you know. And more than most passers by would have done. Truly, everyone will be lining up to thank you-”

_ Passers by. Passer by. _

“Uh,” says Damen. “Passer by?”

“Well,” says Jord, “I assumed. I didn’t think you - ah - worked in the area?” Damen hit  _ Auguste _ in the heart of Chelsea; Damen is wearing a tool belt, a vest and a pair of shorts that have seen better days. In his defense, July in London is pretty ghastly. 

_ Jord doesn’t know _ . Jord doesn’t know Damen hit Auguste. Jord is being nice because he is under the mistaken impression that Damen is a good person, and not the kind of man who accidentally kills pedestrians. Damen has to tell him. 

“I mean, did you see who hit him?” Jord asks, “because I’m pretty sure his brother is planning on pursuing them scorched-earth style. He’s very frightening,” he adds. It seems like it’s supposed to be a joke, but the tightness around his eyes belies him.

Damen is way out of his depth. “I don’t have any money,” he says, because his brain hasn’t caught up yet and, honestly - he thinks he might be mildly concussed.

“What?” says Jord. 

“I’m a tree surgeon,” Damen explains, “so I don’t make a huge amount anyway, but my brother embezzled all our funds and stole my van last month, so there’s really no money at all. And the Skoda’s probably a write off now.”

“Wait,” says Jord.

“And I understand the feeling,” Damen carries on relentlessly, “because I’d probably want to sue me too, but really, he stepped into the road without looking and I’m pretty sure he was on Twitter because he had his phone out, and also I used it to call 999 and I saw. So.”

“You hit him,” Jord says incredulously.

“Yes,” says Damen wretchedly. “And I wish I hadn’t.”

Jord’s nostrils flare. “Get  _ out, _ ” He says.

Damen gets.

-

Well, he gets until he quite literally bumps into one of the paramedics he met before while attempting to exit the building. He reels back a step - that's unusual. Normally other people fall over when they bump into him. He feels bad about that. The paramedic reaches up to steady him. 

"Hello again, lifesaver," she says. "We've been looking for you!"

Damen attempts to smile, but her warm look becomes a little more assessing and her eyes narrow as she gives him a once over. 

She clicks her tongue. "I am pretty sure you,” she says, looking into his eyes from one angle and then another, which is confusing, “have a concussion, darling. You just come with me."

By this point everything is a bit liquid and woozy, but he does put up a token protest that he's just going out to his car to find his friend and he's fine, he's totally fine. "I think not," she says, and it's a blur of being passed hand to hand - "god, you are a big lad, aren't you?" - until he's been firmly placed in a watched ward and told to stay put.

-

They keep him in overnight. Nik comes by with clothes and slippers and a tight self-flagellating frown. “It’s not your fault,” Damen slurs at him. Nik just frowns a bit deeper and presses a cool hand to his forehead. 

_ He’s just confused _ , someone says above his head.  _ And he has pretty bad whiplash, but I just want to keep him in for observation.  _

“I convinced Pallas not to come in, don’t worry,” Nikandros mutters to him. 

“Ha ha,” says Damen very carefully, because the world is sloshing about around him, and then he passes out.

-

He wakes up in the morning feeling like death. It’s pretty early - like, the sun’s just rising - and the observational nurse, clearly bored out of his mind, is engrossed in his phone. He jumps about a foot in the air when Damen makes to walk past him. Damen catches the phone before it hits the ground. Take that, concussion. 

"Don't worry about it," Damen says, feeling generous. The orderly looks like he's about to have a heart attack.

“I’m just going to the loo,” he says, gesturing at the hall. “That… okay?”

He tries to keep his voice down because the people in the other beds are sleeping. Well, beds two and four are. Damen reckons bed three is masturbating, but it seems impolite to mention when they’re trying to be discreet.

The nurse, still catching their breath, waves him away. And he is  _ off. _

Because the thing is, he’s clearly not welcome in Auguste’s ward… when his family are there. But that dead man is Damen’s responsibility, and by god he’s going to keep an eye on him.

-

It’s a very noble thought. Damen was glad to have it. But. It is really boring hanging out with someone who’s asleep. Auguste is handsome, in a stately kind of way, Damen thinks, but he’s not handsome enough to just stare at forever. There’s a red-flushed bruise on his forehead that makes Damen flinch when he looks at it, and his yellow hair has been clipped back around it.

Kill a man and force him to suffer a bad haircut: Damen’s a monster.

Auguste is sleeping  _ really deeply. _ Or in a coma. Damen doesn’t know if it’s medically induced or not but he’s honestly too embarrassed to ask. At least the ward sister here isn’t the one that witnessed Jord banishing him yesterday. She seems pretty chill about him ambling in and sitting next to Auguste’s bed, but nurses are people too, Damen guesses, and maybe she’s just tired? Then again, Damen has the constitution of an ox and has literally never been to a hospital before, so this is all pretty unfamiliar. Maybe you can just wander in and out? Who knows.

It’s not a very productive line of thought. That’s probably why he falls asleep. 

-

What wakes Damen from a relatively pleasant dream of sharing a beer with an conciliatory Auguste (“I shouldn’t have been on my phone,” dream-Auguste had said, before stating that as a thankyou he’d be investing in AKELIOS TREES and Damen would never have to drive the wonky Skoda ever again) is a sharp jab to his thigh with what feels like nothing so much as four needles.

“Fuck,” he says to the sleeping Auguste, “What the fuck did you do that for?” 

“He’s  _ asleep _ , idiot” a voice says peevishly behind him. “Who are you?”

Damen cranes his neck round to look at his attacker, who appears to be a teenage waif in an oversized hoodie. There’s a pair of ballet shoes dangling around his neck. Damen doesn’t spend a lot of time with teenagers, admittedly, but this particular fashion trend is new to him. And in his hand -

“Wait,” he says, “is that a fucking fork? Did you stab me with a fork?”

The waif sniffs. “You were snoring.”

Stung, he replies, gesturing at Auguste, “Well, he’s not exactly chatty at the moment, is he?”

This was not the right thing to say. The teen lifts his head from it’s sullen droop to glare poisonously at him, and then glance at Auguste. He bites his lip. His chin wobbles. He’s only a child, really.

“Oh god,” says Damen. “Don’t cry. Don’t cry, come on,” he says, getting up. “We’ll forget the stabbing. What’s a fork to the thigh between friends? Look, I’m up now, you sit down by Auguste, and you’ll see how much better he’s doing.” 

Having herded the child successfully into the chair, he crouches down awkwardly beside it. Awkwardly because his thigh stings like mad. Because the weeping child in the chair stabbed him. This is the worst and weirdest week of his life.

He grabs a tissue and passes it to the waif, who accepts it without complaint. “How do you know Auguste? Is he your…” he eyeballs the age difference. “Dad?”

The waif sniffs. “No,” he says, “he looks after me.”

“Right,” says Damen, like someone who gets it. He does not get it.

The waif blows his nose. “I’m Nicaise,” he says. “Why are you here? I know all of Auguste’s friends.”

“Well, we’ve been hanging out, you know, bonding.” Nicaise gives him a flat look. “Well,” Damen says defensively, “he seemed lonely.”

They sit and look at Auguste for a bit, the beep of his heart monitor as steady as a metronome. Nicaise blows his nose again. Loudly.

“I should probably go soon,” Damen says reluctantly. It feels unfair to leave Nicaise alone. “Is there someone with you? I didn’t realise visiting hours had started yet.” 

“They haven’t,” Nicaise says, unconcerned. “Laurent says official hours are for other people.”

“Right,” says Damen, “Sure.”

Nicaise continues unprompted, “He said he was going to go and talk to Auguste’s doctor, because he’ll feel better once someone else cries. Well, he only said the first part out loud. But I could tell.” 

He looks at Damen. “I thought you were a doctor at first, and you really shouldn’t be sleeping on the job. That’s why I poked you.”

“Poked is an understatement, thanks,” Damen responds, because it’s important to be clear about these things. Kastor probably wouldn’t have grown up to be such a psycho if people had been a little firmer with him when he was 13. “And no. Not a doctor.”

Nicaise narrows his eyes. “Have you escaped from another ward? Are you one of the criminally insane?”

Damen gestures at his pyjamas. “I don’t think they let you dress like this in Broadmoor.”

“They shouldn’t let you dress like that  _ anywhere _ .”

He’s quite attached to these cottons, which are admittedly ancient, but he needs to let it go. He can’t get into a slanging match with a kid whose - carer? - he’s just hospitalised. He really can’t. Resolve, Damen, resolve.

“Like you can talk,” he retorts. He blames the concussion. “What, are they hoping you’ll grow into that hoodie in the next decade?” 

Nicaise flushes. “It belongs to Auguste,” he hisses. “Also,” he says, gathering himself. “Oversized things are in fashion. Not that you would know.” 

Damen accepts this with equanimity. “Fair,” he says. Gesturing at his pyjamas he adds, “These are from 2009, I think.”

“Yes,” says Nicaise. “I could tell.”

Out of the corner of his eye he sees the nurse heading towards them, and mentally braces for the stern talk about leaving people you killed alone. Instead she says - “Hello! Are you Damianos Akelios?”

“That’s me,” Damen responds, flashing her a grin. “Guess I’m not supposed to be here?” Out the corner of his eye he can see Nicaise eying him suspiciously.

The nurse giggles. “Oh no, you’re fine. But you better head upstairs. They were a bit worried about where you’d gone!”

“I can imagine,” says Damen, with a straight face. “An empty bed in the ward for the criminally insane would be a bit frightening.”

“I still have that fork, you know,” Nicaise mutters. 

It’s only as he follows her out that he realises he forgot to ask who  _ Laurent  _ was.

-

Hospitals are extremely perplexing places. Damen’s first nurse gets caught up by the ward phone, and she passes him on to a hassled looking man in stained scrubs, who in turn snaps at a redhead lounging against an overloaded trolley to stop pretending to wait for the lift and to take Damen upstairs. 

Said nurse gives Stained-scrubs a look of such loathing that part of Damen wants to recoil. “Of course, doctor,” he faux-simpers. “Your wish is my command.” 

His demeanour changes when he turns to Damen though. “Oh good,” he exclaims, “it’s you!”

“Your poor doctor was looking for you everywhere,” the nurse he’s been palmed off onto says, bustling him upstairs. “Not that you could have been hard to find,” he continues merrily, “what with the height and the face and - well, everything else. Greek god on the loose, that’s what the orderly said.” 

A passing doctor barks a shocked “Ancel!” after them. 

“Whoops,” says Ancel, unrepentant. “Not very professional of me.” Then he winks. 

Damen can’t help the pleased chuckle. Flattery is at least a welcome distraction from orphaning a child with behavioural issues.

“See?” Ancel says, “better already!”

-

“I don’t understand,” Nikandros says, later that morning. “Isn’t he better? Why can’t he leave?”

“As I’ve already told Mr Akelios,” an extremely harried doctor responds, “we want to do a few scan just in case there’s any residual issues, but,”

“The technician is in Majorca,” Damen adds helpfully.

Nik closes his eyes. “Are there not  _ other _ people who could do the scans? They can’t  _ all _ be in Majorca. Why Majorca? Is it the nineties?”

Damen knows that at least three of the hospitals’ technicians are in Majorca because they’re celebrating their humanist commitment ceremony slash throuple wedding, and that the normal staff bank is depleted because  _ one _ senior doctor gave one nurses aide glandular fever, and now fifty percent of them are off sick, because Mills and Boon have been wrong about a lot of things but rarely inter-workforce shagging. But he can’t tell Nik that in front of the doctor, because Ancel - who has been feeding him salacious gossip all day - might get in trouble.

“I like Majorca,” he protests instead. Nik likes Majorca too, because they went there on holiday once and Nik cried at the Robert Graves museum because he loves a martial epic. Damen only welled up a bit, in a noble sort of way. 

“If I could interrupt,” says the doctor, unimpressed. 

The gist of the interruption is this: they don’t want him to leave without the scan, they can’t have that done without a technician, there are no technicians available. And his injury is - “low priority,” the doctor explains.

“ _ Low priority, _ ” Nik hisses.

“People are dying, Nik,” Damen interjects, with a dash of gleeful absurdity. Staying in longer sucks. But it also means - Auguste. Another morning waiting for him to wake up. It’s worth that much, he thinks.

Nik eventually leaves, evicted by an exhausted Ancel -  _ even if he is almost as nice to look at as you  _ \- and promising to return as soon as possible the next day. 

-

Dinner is decidedly uninspiring. 

“Look,” the girl with the trolley says, “I’m not going to tell you it’s yummy. That’s a lie for grannies and babies. But it is free. So eat it or don’t eat it - but don’t complain. Ok?”

Damen says okay, and as soon as she’s gone swings his legs off the bed and approaches the ward nurse. 

“If I go out looking for something edible are you going to report me missing again?”

The man narrows his eyes. “Are you going to disappear for three hours again?” Fair point.

“No?” Damen replies, with what he hopes is a bashful smile. 

The nurse sighs. “Fine - forty minutes max! Or it’s going out over the tannoy.”

“I’ll be home by curfew, Mum, promise,” Damen quips, and heads out into the great unknown to find a sandwich.

-

The thing is though, that hospitals are rarely built in one gasp, and instead get cobbled together bit by bit, wing by wing, as budgets come and go and lobbying comes through or doesn’t. All this means that it takes Damen twenty minutes to find the bloody shop, and he’s pretty sure it’s going to take him another 15 minutes to get back, even now he’s figured out the route. 

To add insult to injury, there are only three sandwiches. They all look utterly miserable. 

He’s just reaching down for the least wretched looking of them, when his hand collides with someone else’s. It’s a funny angle, and their fingers kind of tangle for a split second before they yank their respective hands back. 

“Sorry,” says a lovely voice, that belongs to an even lovelier man standing just slightly to his left. “I didn’t realise you hadn’t seen me.”

“No worries,” says Damen, struck a little dumb. He is very, very blonde. “You’re welcome to the,” he bends to read the label, and picking it up, says “the NHS’s finest smoked ham salad. It’s the least I could do.”

Damen offers it gently to the stranger, who takes it from him with a quirk of the mouth that’s like the sweeter cousin of a smile. 

“I understand now why you didn’t see me,” he says, and there’s a curl of a french accent licking its way around the words. “We are on quite different planes, you and I.”

Even stooping, Damen is only a touch shorter. He’s probably a head taller at his full height. The thought is a little thrill.

“I don’t know,” Damen says. “Seems about the same from down here.” He smiles - and the man gives a little involuntary smile back. 

“You won’t miss your ham salad?” 

Damen shrugs. “I’ll be perfectly happy with the cream of crop, the,”  _ oh, gross _ , “the cheese mayo. Truly the pinnacle of Britain’s culinary heights.”

“Hmm,” says the man. It feels like it would be a grin from someone more demonstrative.

Damen is just contemplating how to convey both his attractiveness as a potential partner and the fact that he isn’t in hospital for any horrific communicable diseases when the tannoy crackles to life.

_ MR AKELIOS TO WARD 4 PLEASE.  _

“Fuck!” Damen says, standing up abruptly. “That’s my cue.” He casts a last, longing glimpse at the ham salad and the pale, fine fingered hand holding it.

_ MR AKELIOS TO WARD 4, REPEAT _

“Sorry,” he says to the blonde man, who’s looking at him with some measure of cool amusement. “Really, enjoy the sandwich.”

He inclines his head gravely. A curtain of butter-gold hair swings forward over his face. Damen feels it like a punch to the gut. That doesn’t even seem like it’s got anything to do with the concussion.

_ MR DAMIANOS AKELIOS TO WARD 4, YOU PROMISED, REPEAT _

He did, didn’t he? With a sigh, he sets down the cheese mayo and turns on his heel. He doesn’t think anyone could really blame for tossing one last wink over his shoulder.

He gets in so much trouble back at the ward that he eats his gruel without question, endures an entire evening of reproachful looks, and spends every second of it thinking of that hair, those long hands.

_ - _

“Absolutely not.” 

Damen was expecting this. But he came prepared. 

He gusts a sigh, and runs a hand through his hair. This both shows off his arms to their best advantage and leaves his hair curling loosely around his face. He adopts the facial expression that Jokaste had taught him (before she left him for his brother, a TV show and Hollywood, in that order) to make when he really wanted something (“This is going to be your kryptonite, okay? Bite your lip. No, in the centre. Brows down. Tuck your chin and - that’s it.”) and says in a low, throbbing voice - “ _ please? _ ”

The ward nurse puts his face in his hands. “For fucks sake. Ok, get out. Be back before your fucking scan, ok?”

With a silent thankyou to any listening deities, Damen gets out.

One last morning with Auguste. Maybe today he’ll wake up. Damen hopes against hope he does.

It’s only half six in the morning but already bright outside, and he strides through windows of sunlight on his way to Auguste’s ward. It feels like a good sign, like a promise, like every square of intense warmth says  _ he’ll live, he’ll be awake _ .

He’s asleep.

Damen feels his hopes deflate in his chest. He doesn’t know where his bizarre optimism had even come from. Ham-salad hadn’t been that good looking. 

He sits heavily down in the chair, and doesn’t even look up when the nurse sets a cup of tea down by him. “Ancel said to look out for you,” she murmurs. “Stay as long as you need to.”

So he sits. His scan’s at ten. He has time.

Sitting’s almost as boring as just looking, so he talks instead. He tells Auguste about his rotten year and his bad luck, and the good things too - the sycamore they brought back to life with careful cutting, the coppicing course he’s going to run next summer, the auditor’s admiration of Nik’s scrupulous accounting post-Kastor, the goals he saw Kashel score in her first pro game, the first time Pallas got in harness, the thrill of seeing Jokaste on television that had gone a long way to soothe the sting of her leaving, the filthy jokes Lazar tells just to make Pallas blush, the Still he pretends he doesn’t know Makedon keeps in the back of the garage.

“-It would be one thing if the stuff he produced was drinkable, but it smells like paintstripper and tastes like fennel, which is a really unsettling combination. None of us are sure what percentage it comes out at, but Lazar swears it’s fifty exactly, and I can believe him. Maybe when you’re well I could bring you some? It’s an acquired taste, but-”

“So,” a voice announces from behind him. It’s low, and slightly french, and distinctly unamused. It lights up his spine like lightning. “Killing my brother once wasn’t enough, hmm? You intend to poison him also.”

Damen turns around. It’s the man from before, ham-salad, stood in the doorway like an avenging saint. The slant of sunshine through the blinds lights up his hair like pure gold. Damen damns his rotten luck.

“I can’t tell you,” he says, “how sorry I am. I’m Damianos Ak-”

“I know who you are,” the man interjects. “We’ve met, remember?”

“Yes,” Damen says, heart in his mouth. “I do.”

“Jord told me he had the displeasure of making your acquaintance.” The man walks towards the bed and Damen awkwardly steps out of the way. He’s so caught up he only half notices Nicaise slip in after him, half in his shadow as the man approaches Auguste, lays a hand against his brow. Nicaise curls into the vacated chair, watching like a cat as the man turns back to Damen.

The man gives him a long, cool look. “If he dies.” The threat is implicit but still - “I’m going to ruin you,” he says. 

Wonderful.

“And you,” says Damen, “must be the brother.” 

The man sniffs. 

“It’s Laurent, right?” Laurent snaps his head up to glare at him accusatively. “I’m not stalking you,” says Damen. “Nicaise told me.” 

“Did he now,” says Laurent sharply, blue eyes flickering over to where Nicaise is texting furiously by Auguste’s head. 

Nicaise rolls his eyes. “He’s a loser, Laurent, not a perv.”

“I’m going to contest the first part and thank you for the second,” he says drily. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a flicker of amusement on Laurent’s face, but it’s gone as soon as he sees it, smoothed out into impassivity. 

“Also the moonshine was a joke. Unless,” he hears himself continue, “you’re homebrew fans, in which case-”

“No,” Laurent says. “I think we will be fine.”

It’s a clear dismissal. But Damen both doesn’t want to go and feels like he can’t, like there’s something very important at stake that he just can’t put his finger on yet.

“I’ll do anything I can to put it right,” he says before he can even think about it. And he means it too, that’s the worst thing about it. He would, he realises. 

Laurent cocks his head. “Anything,” he says silkily. “What an offer. What could I possibly want from you?” 

Damen grits his teeth against what he wants to say and concentrates instead on the raw edge under his words, the pain of fearing for a sibling, losing them. He thinks about their three bright heads together and their sharp tongues and the sting, underneath it all, of what Kastor did, the things he broke apart and didn’t bother to put back together. 

“I don’t know,” he says instead. He looks at Laurent, catches those startling eyes. “But you can have it. You can have anything from me that I can give you. I’ve never,” he swallows, throat suddenly rough, “meant anything more.”

The room is deadly still. Until suddenly, from the bed, like a blessing, a voice, parched with disuse, says - “ _ Laurent? _ ”

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Standing Orders are the rules under which a parliament conducts its business, determines who takes precedence etc. Damen's not exactly adhering to these.  
> Also, this takes place before Party Lines, but I still think that one comes first, thematically. This one just wouldn't turn out funny, no matter how I tried, but I hope a hopeful story about some things turning out ok are welcome anyway, in these testing times.


End file.
